Last weekend, I had the chance to check out the current exhibition called Ik R.I.P. at Mediamatic Amsterdam, which has recently relocated to a very central spot in a former bank on Vijzelstraat, escalators and all. Like the two previous 'Ik'-shows, this one revolves around the idea of self-representation on the internet, but this time it's all about death.

"...not a happy topic, but it is important nonetheless. Besides arranging your funeral, obtaining a life insurance and drafting your will it can be useful to think about what you leave behind in the online world. You may have a profile on Mediamatic.net and other networks, perhaps you write a blog or chat with people who live on the other side of the world. What happens to all those affairs if you suddenly pass away?"

Tackling these issues are a range of artists, most prominently in the space The Travelers by Elisabeth Heyert. A series of portraits "taken after death in Harlem New York. Photographed against a black background, using the techniques of making formal portraits of the living, these photographs explore what qualities make us seem human before and after death."

Elisabeth Heyert's Travelers

Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn aka Tale of Tales are showing a game called The Graveyard in the darkened basement, in which the player walks an old lady through a cemetery and eventually sits her down on a bench to access a Dutch song, which is actually a quite sad experience. They describe 'The Graveyard' not as a game as such, "but as an interactive painting". I'd say it clearly is a game, but one which hits a somber note that is fairly hard to achieve in this medium.

The Graveyard

Upstairs, in a brightly lit small room there's a wonderful selection of incredible Ghanaian coffins, one of which has been custom-crafted by a gentleman called Eric Adotey Naah after a sketch of Mediamatic graphic designer Anuschka Linse's "ideal coffin" and then shipped to Amsterdam. It's quite an incredible and well-documented story and the coffin looks like a crazy bear.

Anuschka Linse's ideal coffin

Further projects include a coffin where you can test-die and have your picture taken using their ever-evolving RFID projects, coffin-making workshops and more.

This year, the Radiator exhibition, part of the festival which just ended in Nottingham, put the emphasis on the theme of the urban networked environment and its effect on our day to day lives and commissioned artists to develop projects that investigate and challenge the dominant forces at work in an increasingly hybrid and ever-changing urban environment.

The result where displayed until January 24 at Surface Gallery in Nottingham where an exhibition titled Exploits in the Wireless City displayed the work of the commissioned artists along with others whose work engage with similar issues.

As it has been often written, British people are the most surveilled citizens on the planet. Folke Köbberling & Martin Kaltwasser carefully measured and mapped the spaces throughout Nottingham city that escape the gaze of CCTV cameras. The surveillance-free areas, much smaller than what the artists expected, were marked as 'blind spots'. Each of these spots became the floor plan of a small wooden structure available 24/7 to anyone as a room for "un-determined acts".

Photo: Copyright Karen Fraser 2009 - courtesy of Radiator Festival

The structures were built from materials thrown away and found in the direct environment of the CCTV-free zones.

The work is an act of resistance to reclaim a space and change its meaning, encouraging people everywhere to resist the powers that create the surveillance state.

At the same time, the work mirrors the socio-economic aspect of the city - the city as a resource, the materiality of the city, the free material of a city.

Photo: Copyright Karen Fraser 2009 - courtesy of Radiator Festival

Danish art collective N55 are working as the N55 INTELLIGENCE AGENCY [NIA], an entity dedicated to gathering information about concentrations of power with the ultimate purpose of uncovering the plans, strategies and tactics of such organizations (urban planning offices, building industries, banks, etc). Once they have spotted the organization, they try to infiltrate it and make suggestions that promote alternative ways of dealing with real estate, finance, etc.

During their Radiator operation, the NIA have focused their activities on the Meadows Gateway, an urban regeneration project on the south side of the city. NIA has been told the development will offer 70,000 sq m of swanky flooring space housing offices, a hotel, leisure facilities, shops, student accommodation, car parking and, most controversially, a twelve storey tower for luxury apartments. Included in this scheme is a budget to improve facilities and smarten up the Meadows estate. The result will be the kind of glass and steel development that looks impressive on paper but that lacks soul. It is very unlikely that the local community which has had no say at all in the development so far will feel at home and take responsibility for the area.

Taking their cue from the famous Christiania, a partially self-governing neighbourhood of about 850 residents located in the borough of Christianshavn in Copenhagen, NIA suggests another kind of revamping for the Meadows.

When the military moved out of the Christiania area in the early '70s, hippies and anarchists settled in and created a society with its won rules and laws. Christiania has established semi-legal status as an independent community, but has been a source of controversy since its creation. Free as they were of any kind of regulations, inhabitants had free reign to build the houses they wanted to live in. This freedom has given rise to some unusual and highly creative dwellings.

NIA proposes to build with a similar spirit. Inhabitants of Nottingham should be able to rent the area and build whichever house they would be happy in. They would get the help of architects and city planners to realize their dream.

Along with these DYOH (design your own house) schemes, N55 also suggest the use of what they call MICRO architectures - architecture deriving from pre-existing communities under threat: Micro Dwellings, the Snail Shell System, and of course the magnificent Walking House.

NIA, in their investigations, have brought together material from planners meetings and local residents from Nottingham and compared it with notes from other cities. To these files, they added bits and pieces of Christiana and also some examples of MICRO architectures. They mixed everything together and made a long, horizontal collage that forms NIA's own new development board.

Photo: Copyright Karen Fraser 2009 - courtesy of Radiator Festival

For Radiator, Glenn Davidson from Artstation has researched the use and possible abuse of ON/OFF buttons. The ON/OFF button has become so ubiquitous in our lives we have ceased to think of or even notice them. Davidson explores how the use of the humble ON /OFF buttons and switches draws us to consume more energy. Today's electronic systems have for, the most part, divorced us from the ability to fully shut down a system pandering to the needs for instant operability. Manufacturers prefer to give us control of a 'pause' or standby state rather than a full shut down.

Photo: Copyright Karen Fraser 2009 - courtesy of Radiator Festival

Most people aren't aware that standby mode actually uses enough energy to release about 800,000 tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year in the UK alone. In fact, the U.S. Department of Energy has estimated that by 2010, the portion of each utility customer's bill consumed by appliances in standby mode will reach 20%.

Photo: Copyright Karen Fraser 2009 - courtesy of Radiator Festival

For the exhibition at Surface Gallery, Davidson has created a series of switch boards (in the sense of boards covered with switches), one of them had some 100 switches that you had to put on OFF position one after the other to switch off the board, reflecting a phenomenon we have lost touch with: the slow process of electricity before the generalization of

ON/OFF (button research) will also be part of FACT's exhibition 'Climate for Change' at FACT Liverpool in March 2009.

Mudamis Luxembourg's very own and very classy museum of modern and contemporary art. I've been following their always exciting and bold programme for a couple of years and was very eager to see it but then you need a rock solid motive to spend a day in Luxembourg. The other day i woke up and decided that Mudam would be mine.

The bar-cafeteria and boutique might be the most elegant and cosy i've ever seen. Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec covered the canteen-style eating area with a cameo sky of heat-formed textile tiles. The shop -which received a similar roof- is set out like a market stall right in the middle of the exhibition hall. The 'slow food' food is nice but the offer at the shop is mindwallet-blowing. Apparently the museums has a designer and a trend forecast analyst tour the world to throw the most curious and design-y objects at your stunned face.

There were half a dozen exhibitions to visit, my next post will focus on RRRIPP!! Paper Fashion. See you there....

In the meantime and in a rush, here's a couple of interesting artworks i discovered at the exhibition ELO. INNER EXILE - OUTER LIMITS, a snapshot of the contemporary art scene in Luxembourg (Elo means 'now' in Luxembourg.)

I almost jumped out of the room "Disco Guantanamo" when i saw a drawing of 'dungeon monster' and 'sex beast' (dixit the always subtle Daily Mail) Josef Fritzl. I was indeed wondering how long it would take to find him referenced in an artwork. That one was part of a series of artefacts by Filip Markiewicz, a musician and visual artist, whose work often denounces the 'blind spots' in current events.

Pasha Rafiy, NYC Ghost I-X, 2008. Courtesy Pasha Rafiy

Pasha Rafiy was scheduled to photograph John Lurie last Spring in New York. Waiting several weeks for an appointment that kept being postponed, Rafiy turned his lens to the inhabitants of the city. Until Lurie did eventually invite him home on the day of his actual departure.

Jean-Louis Schuller's documentary takes a peek inside the life of immigrants living in Chungking Mansions. One of the cheapest accommodations in Hong Kong, the building is supposedly residential, but it looks more like a labyrinth of guesthouses, curry restaurants, African bistros, clothing shops, sari stores, and foreign exchange offices.

The film Director writes: As perhaps the most diversely populated building on earth it is a paradise of multi-culturalism and low-end globalisation, uniquely belonging to no one and everyone. For years the building has been notorious both as a refuge for petty criminals and illegal immigrants, and for its unsanitary living conditions. Yet it exists as a perfect example of a city as an organic mega-structure, flexible enough to fulfill every need from religion to water supply, while providing an alternative to conventional space, culture and time. What is fascinating here, besides all the shortcomings, is that Chungking somehow succeeds, continuously evolving to accommodate the hopes of those that find themselves drawn there.

My film Chungking Dreams takes us into the heart of this Pandora's box, isolating characters and scenes from the myriad of options that exist layer on layer in the building, taking us into their most inner spaces and reflecting on a world in which we all have to fight for the space to live out our dreams.

Paulistas much chagrined by the pauperism of this year's São Paulo Biennial pointed me to its Off version, the Paralela '08. They made sure to add "You know this isn't a huge event either but there are a few interesting pieces over there!"

Titled From Near and Far, the event nods to De près et de loin, a book that documents a conversation between philosopher Didier Eribon and anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. Curator Rodrigo Moura chose artists who invite us to reflect on the influence of space in their respective works. Although the selection stretches over several continents, most of the pieces are by Brazilian artists.

It's been a challenge to find information and good pictures about the artworks i liked the most so i'm going to highlight just a few of them and end with a slideshow, i added the name of the artwork and its author wherever i could so that you can get a better idea of what the Paralela was like (to see the titles of the pictures, i'm afraid you'll have to click on the images and go straight to clumsy clunky flickr).

By the entrance, the provocative and highly ironic photograph made by Rubens Mano shows the Niemeyer pavilion used for the Biennial since 1957. Empty, like most of the pavilion of the Biennial this year, it suggests the limitless potential of the unfilled site.

Lina Kim's Rooms are also empty but they have reached a stage of total abandonment. The photographer patiently archives rooms that have been abandoned to time. Sometimes, objects and equipment such as cables, tired wallpaper, peeling paint, fire extinguishers or metal cabinets subsist but nothing reveals what the former function of the room. But outside, the vegetation keeps growing.

Rooms Wittstock, 2008

Rooms Beelitz, 2006

Sara Ramo explores everyday life. In her photo series, Como aprender o que acontece na normalidade das coisas, Ramo investigates the moment when objects stop making sense in people's life and generate chaotic situations. Like when she has all shampoos, soaps, towels and brushes pulled out of bathroom cupboards and laid on the floor.

Cinema Sim - Narratives and Projections, currently on view at Itau Cultural in Sao Paulo, is one of those rare exhibitions you exit wearing the silliest smile on your face. You are happy. The selection of the artworks is faultless, each piece gets the space it deserves and needs, and the theme of the exhibition with tis mix of edginess and approachability is particularly appealing.

View of one of the exhibition rooms. Image courtesy of Itau Cultural

Cinema Sim - Narratives and Projectionsis not an exhibition about cinema, but rather about the idea and concept of cinema and how contemporary artists imbue their works with creative and aesthetic principles that hark back to the cinematic language and its means of expression, wrote Curator Roberto Moreira S. Cruz in the catalog of the exhibition.

The 18 works selected explore three core themes: narrativity, the illusion of visualness and the reference to the kinetic experiences of the pre-cinematic era.

There is magic not only in the way he infused a new life into the abandoned objects but also in the outcome of his manipulation. Itau Cultural was exhibiting three of his sculptures:

To activate the first one, you have to insert a coin in a slot and the photos of a photographic film will (almost) appear to become animated inside a tiny tv-like screen. Because the whole mechanism is exposed, the spectacle is also present out of the screen.

Milton Marques, Untitled

A mundane fruit squeezer powers another of Marques' work.

Milton Marques, Untitled

Marques' pieces provide some further thoughts on the analogy/dissimilarity between cinema and the 18 visual art works at Itau Cultural. Of course, the devices that project the moving images are quirky and ingenious. They clearly refer to cinema but even the space where they are exhibited is miles away from what you would expect to see in a movie theater. Visitors are not spectators bound to their seats, they can circulate and move from one screen to another. The screens themselves are worth a closer look. They do not come necessarily in the typical shape of a large-scale two-dimensional white canvas. As the rest of the exhibition demonstrates, some of these screens are tiny, one is the surface of a light bulb, one is made of sand, another one moves. Sometimes the images are split over multiple screens.

89 Seconds at Alcázar, a work by The Rufus Corporation + Eve Sussman, might look at first sight as almost cinematographic but it refers to other artistic disciplines such as performance, photography and painting. 89 Seconds at Alcázar is almost as haunting as the artworks it takes its inspiration from: Diego Velasquez's seventeenth-century masterpiece, Las Meninas.

Video Still from "89 seconds at Alcázar" by Eve Sussman and The Rufus Corporation. Photo: Eve Sussman and The Rufus Corporation

Velasquez's painting is one of the most studied and discussed in the history of art. He shakes up the traditional rules of the pictorial architecture by placing King Philip IV of Spain and Queen Mariana both "outside" the painting as observers of the scene and "inside" the space through their reflection in the back wall mirror. Besides, he became one of the first painters known to address his own identity as artist by portraying himself in the act of painting the canvas.

In the ten-minute high definition video 89 seconds at Alcázar, the court of Spain is animated. Its protagonists murmur and whisper in each other's ears, they move in a slow choreography across the space to finally take up their position in the painting. But unlike in the original artwork, the scene is envisioned from Velasquez' perspective.

Jeff Wood as Philip IV, King of Spain. Production Still from "89 seconds at Alcázar" by Eve Sussman and The Rufus Corporation. Photo: Benedikt Partenheimer for The Rufus Corporation

The fact that the protagonists in baroque wardrobe do not look very Spanish is a bit uncanny. That detail left aside, the instant frozen in time by Velasquez's brush is brought back to life true to its original objective: to capture a scene in the everyday life of the royal family.

Rosângela Rennó's Frutos Estranhos delicately plays with our perception. Each image, displayed inside a tilted portable DVD player as if it were a picture frame, presents what looks like a static image. Yet, because sound has been added and because the images have been edited and digitally manipulated, viewers have the feeling that they can perceive some type of subtle movement in photos.

In the early '70s Anthony McCall developed solid light films, which emphasize the sculptural qualities of a light beam as it comes in contact with particles in the air. In You and I, Horizontal III, he uses vapor from a haze machine to shape an almost tangible 3D ray.

There is much more to see at Cinema Sim - Narratives and Projections. The exhibition runs until December 21 at Itau Cultural, Sao Paulo. If you can't make it to Sao Paulo before the show closes, a consolation prizes awaits you: the catalog is available online as a PDF (now you'll just have to click around, cuz it is burried somewhere inside one of those Flash obnoxiousness.)

No proper building. Not even an architecture project that would give a hint of what its future headquarters would be like. That didn't prevent El Bòlit, a brand new Contemporary Art Center, from opening its borrowed doors a few weeks ago in Girona.

For many Europeans used to fly on the cheap, Girona equals Barcelona or the Costa Brava. Ever since one of the most famous 'no frills' airlines chose the airport as one of their hubs, hordes of travelers land there, grab their luggage on the rotating belt and hop on an hour bus ride that brings them directly to Barcelona centre. They never get to see Girona. They miss a lovely medieval city. Its cathedral is celebrated as one of the finest specimens of Gothic architecture in Spain, there's a local tradition of climbing steps to kiss the butt of a stone lioness and people will invite you to eat chocolate flies. And now there's that new contemporary art space called El Bolit.

The Bòlit was a game popular among children in Catalonia until the middle of the XXth century. "It's a metaphor for a dynamic center, one that is constantly moving and is pushed forward by people", explained its Director, Rosa Pera, to Spanish newspaper El Pais. The opening exhibition of the center proves that, if the center is still waiting for a proper building, it certainly doesn't lack a strong personality, a dauntless attitude and a very promising exhibition programme.

As the introduction to its current show, In Construction. Recipes from Scarcity, Ubiquity and Excess, states:Beyond the construction of a building, the creation of a contemporary art centre involves first and foremost the construction of a discourse, relationships and dialogue. This is why the first exhibition at the new centre focuses on processes that explore new methodologies to articulate narratives with the context as a starting point.

Retrospective Cirugeda. Image courtesy El Bolit

Heading the party is Santiago Cirugeda whose Recetas Urbanas (Urban recipes) are lined up for a retrospective made of models, videos and a brand new intervention. The work of the Sevillan architect fosters the dialogue between institutions and citizens in order to come up with better ideas susceptible to solve the issue of housing and public space management.

Retrospective Cirugeda. Image courtesy El Bolit

Santiago Cirugeda has sometimes been labeled as a "guerilla architect", "a subversive artist", "a urban hacker". His action/constructions are always adapted to the situation. Because his home town, Sevilla, would not authorize him to build a playground, Cirugeda obtained a dumpster permit and installed a playground on top of a dumpster container. In another intervention, he built and occupied a rooftop crane that passersby believed was there only to move building materials. He even posted on you tube a video to demo how to build a temporary flat in your rooftop. Cirugeda's recipes are cheap, fast, accessible to everyone and one of their key ingredient is that some of them exploit the gaps in administrative structure and official procedures. They intervene where the law falls short.

Santiago Cirugeda, Niu. Images courtesy El Bolit

Cirugeda also developed a site specific architectural intervention on the roof of Girona's Sala de La Rambla (where half of the exhibition is hosted.) The temporary infrastructure has been designed with the aim of hosting artistic activities as well as providing a working space for Spanish and international artists invited to work at El Bolit. El Niu (the Nest in catalan) is made of several containers and covered with branches and leaves.

Probably more famous to the new media art community, Michelle Teran opens the second chapter of the exhibition, the one dedicated to Ubiquity. The artist is showing her recipes for making and re-making narratives out of everyday experience inside Girona's intimate Capella de Sant Nicolau.

In her performance series titled Life: A User's Manual, the artist applies potential literature methodologies and uses video scanners to pick up images recorded on wireless security cameras (inside hotel lobby, private home, bank entrances, etc.) Scenes thus recorded in 17 cities around the world are projected in the exhibition space. I had seen the work of Teran in countless exhibitions but it was the first time i had the opportunity to see displayed next to one another not only the videos of her performances, but also the wide range of devices she uses to host the video scanners. Suddenly i realized the breadth and complexity of her work. I was particularly struck by A20 Recall, a collective exercise in cultural memory carried out by the artist over the course of three weeks with the help of residents of Quebec City. The result of the experiment is an online map of made of texts and images documenting situations that arose in response to the fortification of Quebec City during the FTAA Summit of the Americas in 2001.

Technology is used as a tool to discover the significance of the trivial and to re-endow hidden stories with meaning, while fostering a critical spirit among citizens from their immediate surroundings. This is active, collective voyeurism used to combat indifference and oblivion.

The third part of the exhibition is From excess, recipes for an architecture of accumulative thought by Catalan artist Jordi Mitjà. The Catalan artist defines himself as an 'image collector'. He has carefully compiled and slightly edited images recorded by amateur film-makers in the 1970s in order to create a singular portrait of Empordà County in Catalonia.

Installation of Jordi Mitjà. Image courtesi El Bolit

Mitjà has also composed a large-scale installation for El Bòlit. An accumulation of old photos, fragments, left-overs, video, and findings, the piece builds up the foundations of argumental architectures that welcome and rebuff those who, trapped perhaps between illness and therapy, dare to enter.

The smart-looking little man up here isn't very concerned by the exhibition but i'd nevertheless like to introduce you to him. He is Sant Narcís (St Narcissus), Girona's patron saint, famous for having defeated French invaders by throwing swarms of flies at them.